Nightmare in Venice was the second album by the British group
Red Priest, which one might describe as crossover Baroque. It was originally released in 2002 and is reissued here on its own Red Priest Recordings label, with cheap-horror-movie packaging to match the theme of the album and the generally over-the-top qualities of their music. If you haven't heard
Red Priest, this collection offers a good place to find out what it's all about. Briefly,
Red Priest reduces or rearranges Baroque ensemble scores to a group consisting of recorder, violin, cello, and harpsichord, and then begins to fool with them. The group sometimes combines two or more pieces in one performance, and the climax is often a full-blown pastiche of many sources: here a Fantasia on Corelli's "La Folia" that throws in everything from
Elgar, jazz, heavy metal, various Mediterranean styles, and who knows what else. The group uses pop-style fades at the ends of pieces on occasion and exaggerates the rhetorical devices contained in the original pieces, often grotesquely, and in so doing revealing a high degree of instrumental virtuosity. Some of the antics of violinist
Julia Fischer and cellist
Angela East in the "Witches' Dance" section of the English Fantasy Suite assembled from music by Robert Johnson (the English composer, not the American guitarist, one has to add in this context) and the aptly named Nicholas le Strange suggest what might have happened if
George Crumb had written neo-classic music in the
Stravinsky mold. Recorder player
Piers Adams bends the notes of his instrument like a blues guitarist, which sounds pretty weird on a recorder. The name
Red Priest comes from a nickname bestowed on
Antonio Vivaldi ("il prete rosso"), and both
Vivaldi's own career and the edgy quality of the whole
Red Priest project are suggested by the title of the group's 2001 premiere release, Priest on the Run.
Vivaldi's flute concerto La Notte (The Night), a highly atmospheric piece to begin with, kicks off the program here in admirable style. Although it's hard to provide a broad evaluation of
Red Priest's music, which you'll either love or hate, that work points to one general argument in favor of what
Red Priest does: no matter how wild it gets, it uses aspects of the original music as a jumping-off point, and although the original composers would certainly be thrown for a loop on hearing
Red Priest's versions, it is by no means certain that they would dislike them. Another general positive is that
Red Priest is often flat-out funny, which distinguishes it from most crossover projects and can only occur because it's a true, well-oiled chamber group, not a pickup ensemble. Try it, you might like it.